1.

INTRODUCTION

Language is every where in human society, across every culture. For most people, it is
an effortless ability that we acquire before we learn how to dress ourselves. Some people feel
that they even think using language, that an important part of their thoughts involves a kind
of internal monologue. Yet, language is not a simple thingit is actually quite complex and
we need to be able to use it quickly. Since Antiquity, a central concern of theories of language
has been the question whether language is predominantly a matter of nature or of
nurture. British Empericism and German Romantic ideas, interacting in complecated ways,
set the stage for much of 19th century linguistic thinking, which culminated in the various
structuralist schools of the first half of the 20th century. Instead of embarking upon the
impossible task of giving an overview of all current theories of languange.

The term psycholinguistics is a little bit misleading in that it minimizes the

contribution of about a half-dozen other fields of scientific research. The whole endeavor of
psycholinguistics often finds a home in the broader reserch field of cognitive science an
interdisciplinary field that addresses the difficult question of how animals, people, and even
computers think.

2. CONTENT
Language As An Object Of Psychological Study

Some languages, like English, Hindi, and Japanese, have millions

of speakers. Languages have clearly defined words that get
combined into sentences, whereas other languages have long, single
words that carry the same meaning as an entire sentence. The sheer
number, differences, and complexity of language, combined with the
relative recentness of modern linguistic study, have meant that we still do
not have a complete account of how every individual language works,
nor a complete, unifying theory of how language as a whole works.
But, we have some pretty good ideas.

a. Basic Features Of Language

1. sound system
 There are two important aspects : first, they have no independent
meaning. So, there is nothing about the b sound in the word bird that
itself means birdthe sounds are arbitrary. Other languages use
different sounds to refer to the same thing. The reason that this is
important is that it makes language very flexible. The second important
thing to know about sound segments is that they cannot be combined in
any old waythey are governed by rules that are specific to each
language. These are not eighth grade English grammar rules that must
be memorized and have a thousand exceptions. These are rules that
one knows unconsciously by virtue of knowing the language and, almost
by definition, dont have random exceptions. For example, in English it is
possible to have the sounds t and l together, like in the word little.

The sound system of language is actually studied in two main parts:

phoneticsis the study of the actual sounds in a language and how they
are produced, whereas phonologyis concerned with how sounds are
mentally categorized and the rules that govern how they are combined.

2. Phonetics

We can define the sounds of language in terms of how they are

produced, or articulated.

articulation refers to which parts of the vocal tract (i.e., the throat, mouth,
and nasal passages) are involved in making the soundfor example, a b
sound is made using our two lips (abilabial place), whereas d is made
by placing the tongue against the ridge right behind the top front teeth
(the alveolarridge, and the so-called alveolar place of articulation).

Vowels are somewhat different from consonants. First of all, while

consonants may be voiced or voiceless, vowels are voiced. Also, the
airflow through the vocal tract is not constricted the way that it can be for
consonants (there are no stop vowels or fricative vowels). Different
vowels are produced by changing the position of the tongue in the mouth
and rounding (or not rounding) the lips. Vowels tend to be louder and
longer than consonants.

3. Phonology

Describing the way language sounds work in the section above

makes the whole system sound fairly straightforward, but there are in fact
a number of complicating issues with understanding speech sounds.
Languages often group together similar sounds into a single sound
categorycalled a phoneme. Different sounds that all form a single
phoneme are called allophones. Thus, in some sense, a phoneme is like a
category of similar sounds. So, part of knowing a language is being able to
immediately and correctly place allophones into their phonemic
category. In other words, we need to be able to identify a sound and
know what category of other similar sounds it gets grouped with.

4. Words and Word structure

Phonemes can be combined (and recombined) to make words, and

words themselves have an internal structure and can even be ambiguous
based on this structure. For example, does the word unlockable mean
able to be unlocked or not able to be locked? It can actually mean
both, and it depends on how you build the internal structure of the word.
Morphology is the study of the structure of wordswhat rules guide how
they can and cant be built. Many words are made of smaller, meaningful
parts that arent actually wordsthings like un and nessthese are
called morphemes. Morphemes are any sets of sounds that carry
meaning. So, while suffixes and prefixes are morphemes, so are whole
words, like catand dog.

5. Sentence Structure
 Words, including their internal sounds and structure, are crucial to
languages, but language doesnt occur as just a set of isolated words,but
instead as word put together in systematic, rule-governed ways. Syntax is
the study of how sentences are formed. This is important part of language
for psycholinguistic researchers, because it poses many questions about
how people understandthese groupings of words.

6. Meaning

The field of semantics is concerned with meaning in language and

can be devide into two major parts : lexical and propositional. Lexical
semantics focuses on word meanings for example, the meaning of the
word cat. Propositional semantics focuses on the meanings of sentences
how we know who did what when we encounter a sentence like the cat
sat on the mat.

7. Real- World Use

This is told about the use phonology, morphology, and syntax we

could talk about rules that might be broken and thus result in ill-formed
utterances, in topics related to real world use. So sentences and words
may be perfectly well formed and even sensible, and yet not be
appropriate for for the context.

1. INTRODUCTION

Language is a central role in our daily lives, like talking about complex thoughts and
ideas, ordering lunch, reading a magazine, or persuading someone to do a favor. Its hard to
imagine if a someone going through an entire day without using reading. reading, producing,
or understanding a single word. if you needed to get a ride from your friend and you
couldn't use language in any form to communicate, how would you say?
 2. CONTENT
The Acquisition of Language

Language Acquisition is very similar to the process children use in acquiring first and
second languages. It requires meaningful interaction in the target language natural
communication in which speakers are concerned not with the form of their utterances but
with the messages they are conveying and understanding. Hypothesized that ther is a fairly
stable order of acquisition of structures in language acquisition, that is, one can see clear
similarities across acquirers as to which structures tend to be acquired early and which tend to
be acquired late (Brown, 1973; Dulay and Burt, 1975). Acquirers need not have a conscious
awarness of the rules they prossess, and may selfcorrect only on the basis of a feel for
grammaticalilty. Language learning is natural. Babies are born with the ability to learn it and
that learning begins at birth. All children, no matter what language their parents speak, learn
language much the same way. This learning takes place in three basic stages.

Basic Stages of Language Learning

Stage One Learning Sounds

When babies are born, they can make and hear all the sounds in all the languages in
the world. Thats about 150 sounds in about 6500 languages. In this stage, babies learn
which phonemes belong to the language they are learning and which dont. The ability to
recognize and produce those sounds is called phonemic awareness, which is important for
children learning to read.

Stage Two Learning Words

At this stage children essentially learn how the sounds in a language go together to
make meaning. For example, they learn that the sounds m, ah, m, and ee refer to that being
that cuddles and feeds them mommy. Thats a significant step because everything we say is
really just a stream of sounds. To make sense of those sounds, a child must be able to
recognize where one word ends and another one begins. These are called word boundaries..
What children are actually learning are morphemes. A morpheme is just a sound or sounds
that have a meaning, like the word mommy. The word mommies, however, has two
morphemes: mommy and s. Children at this stage can recognize that the s means "more
than one" and will know that when that sound is added to other words, it means the same
thing "more than one."
Stage Three Learning Sentences
Children learn how to create sentences. Its means they can put words in the correct
order. For example, they learn that in English we say "I want a cookie" and "I want a
chocolate cookie," not "Want I a cookie" or "I want cookie chocolate." Children also learn the
difference between grammatical correctness and meaning. Noam Chomsky created an
example of this difference in the sentence Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. Children
will know that although the sentence is grammatically correct, it doesnt make sense. They
know that green is a color and can't, therefore, be colorless!

Language Development
Language develops at different rates in different children, but most children follow
this pattern:
Birth
When babies are born, the babies already respond to the rhythm of language. They
can recognize stress, pace, and the rise and fall of pitch.
Six Months
As early as four months, infants can distinguish between language sounds and other
noise, like the difference between a spoken word and a clap. By six months, babies have
begun to babble and coo and that is the first sign that the baby is learning language
Eight Months
Babies can now recognize these sound groups as words, they may not know what the
words mean.
Twelve Months
Children are able to attach meanings to words, and once they can do that, they can
begin to build a vocabulary.

Eighteen Months
Children must know how to use the words they are learning. In this stage of language
development, children are able to recognize the difference between nouns and verbs. And the
first words in a childs vocabulary are nouns.

Twenty-Four Months
Children recognize more than nouns and verbs and understand basic sentence
structure. They can use pronouns, And know the right order of words in a sentence and can
create simple sentences like "Me cookie?" (which means "May I have a cookie?")
Thirty to Thirty-Six Months
By this age, about 90% of what children say is grammatically correct. The mistakes
they make are usually mistakes like adding -ed to irregular verbs to form the past tense.

Further Language Development and Gifted Children

Children continue to expand their vocabulary and develop more complex language.
Their language use really doesnt completely resemble adult language until they reach around
age eleven. Thats when children are able to use what are called although-type sentences.

CONCLUSION:

Based on the explanation above, there are three basic stages of

language learning for the children. They are learning sounds, learning
words, and learning sentences. The first is learning sounds. The children
can hear all the sounds in the world. But, at this stage they can not use
that sounds orally. Then, the second stage is learning words. At this stage,
they know how the sounds in language and try to make the meaning. The
last stage is learning sentences. At this stage, they can create a sentence
grammatically. Generally, language development of the children is
different. It is mean that, every child has different language development.
It begin from birth, six months, eight months, twelve months, eighteen
months, twenty months, and thirty to thirty-six months. The first is from
the birth. When babies are born, they can already respond to the rhythm
of language. They can recognize stress, pace, and the rise and fall of
pitch. But, they can not use that sounds orally. Then, when they are six
months, they can make sounds even thought the sounds are not a part of
the language that they are learning before. When they are thirty to thirty
six months, they can use sentences about 90% grammatically. And
languages have clearly defined words that get combined into
sentences, whereas other languages have long, single words that carry
the same meaning as an entire sentence. There are some basic features
of language, first Sound System, second Phonetics , third Phonology,
Words and Word Structure, Sentence Structure, Meaning,and the last Real-
World Use.

REFERENCES

Cowles, H. Wind. 2011. Psycholinguistic. New York: Springer Publishing Company, LLC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The Acquisition_of_language.

Cornelia, Hamann.2004. Language Acquisition. MIT Press. Introduction, Chapter 1,2 and 8.

Fernandez, Eva and Helen Smith. 2011. Fundamental of Psycholinguistics. New York: Willey
Blackwell.